Fred Emmings, a senior at St. Paul Central, practiced with the Minnesota United in 2020. He got a chance to start for the Loons team in their NEXT Pro League opener last Saturday. (Shari L. Gross, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Saturday's 3-1 loss at North Texas SC was not only Minnesota United's new second team's — MNUFC2 — debut in the MLS NEXT Pro league, it also was the first pro game goalkeeper prospect Fred Emmings played since he signed with the Loons as a 6-5 and 15-year-old homegrown player in January 2020.

That's more than two years without game action, except for one or two games played in California with a Loons U-19 team in December.

"Long time," Emmings said. "Obviously, the result wasn't what we want. But it was great to be back out there. There's things in games you can't replicate in training. It's a completely different thing."

Emmings return to goal and return to game action is why Minnesota United established a second team to play in MLS's new development league.

"Fred hardly has played for a year and a half," Loons coach Adrian Heath said. "So now he has to get into that game mode of having bodies around him. He can train all day but there's nothing like the decision-making on thru balls and coming into traffic. All that type of stuff will be invaluable for him."

Emmings and MNUFC2 allowed goals in Saturday's 79th and 90th minutes that broke a game tied 1-1 since Loons forward Justin McMaster scored a 64th-minute equalizer.

McMaster and fellow first-team training partners Jacori Hayes, Nabi Kibunguchy, Callum Montgomery, Devin Padelford, Aziel Jackson and Tani Oluwaseyi all traveled to Arlington, Texas, for needed playing time against a team owned by FC Dallas.

Emmings called his pro debut a bit of both good and bad after analyzing his performance with goalkeeper coach Stewart Kerr.

"Some good things, some improvements that need to be made," he said. "It's just a lot of learning. That's the biggest thing. Take the good parts and appreciate that, but also learn from the other things."

Now 18, Emmings will graduate in June from St. Paul Central High School, which he has been attending online since he signed professionally. He did so before all his classmates followed suir because of the COVID pandemic.

"I started the online wave," he said.

His distance learning has included some early college-credit courses, including a difficult statistics class.

MNUFC2 has a game scheduled the same day he would walk with classmates at Central High's graduation.

"We'll sort that out as we get closer," Emmings said. "I don't see a lot of my classmates, but it's worth it. This is what I want to do. This is my dream, so it's all worth it."

Metanire trains

Fullbacks Romain Metanire and Oniel Fisher trained fully with the team in Blaine on Tuesday after a long FIFA break weekend. Franco Fragapane worked on his own on the sidelines. International duty players were still away until later this week.